In a damning indictment of the world's ability to halt the illegal wildlife trade, CITES secretary general Willem Wijnstekers demanded more money and more determination from the 166 signatories to the treaty regulating the multi-billion dollar industry.

"This meeting will be of crucial importance for years to come," he said as 1,500 delegates gathered for the 13th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

"What this 30-year convention urgently needs most... is an increase of political will in most, if not all, of its 166 parties.

"CITES is in urgent need of action rather than words," he said. "The CITES budget is dramatically insufficient and does not allow us to fulfill the expectations of civil societies in developing countries."

The failure to enforce wildlife regulations is expected to be a key topic over the next 13 days as activists and governments scrutinise trade rules for some of the world's rarest animals and plants.

Illegal trade is rampant across Asia and host Thailand said it would champion a regional law enforcement network to tackle the crisis.

Thailand, the centre of the world's ivory trading, has been criticised in the past for failing to crack down on smuggling.

"I would like to declare that Thailand is prepared to take the lead in the formation of a new Southeast Asian regional law enforcement network to combat nature crimes," Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told the meeting.

Enforcement is likely to be only the first of a series of contentious issues with the ivory industry and whaling also on the agenda before the conference ends on October 14.

Delegates will debate 50 changes to the global treaty. The stakes are high with the trade worth billions of dollars and covering more than 350 million plant and animal specimens every year, organisers say.

Japan is pushing to end the total trading ban on some populations of minke whale which has recovered to a total of about one million worldwide, but the move will be fiercely opposed by the conservation lobby.

Another controversial move has been proposed by Namibia that wants to change CITES rules to allow it to export 2,000 kilograms (4,409 pounds) a year of raw ivory from elephants which have died naturally.

Environmentalists say this will open another loophole for smugglers to exploit and say that illegal ivory seizures have been rising for a decade, driven by strong demand from China.

An ivory ban has been in place since 1989 and another African nation, Kenya, has proposed a 20-year moratorium on ivory trading.

"If the convention is to maintain any credibility, then delegates must vote for the survival of species and not for those who benefit from this multi-billion dollar destructive and often illegal trade," environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement ahead of the conference.

Conservationists want to use the meeting to get more protection for the great white shark -- best known through the "Jaws" films but in great demand from hunters for its teeth, jaw and fins.

They want trading controlled for the humphead wrasse, a large fish from the Indian and Pacific Oceans which is threatened by demand from restaurants in Hong Kong, China and Singapore.

Measures to protect Asian turtles and tortoises, over-exploited for food and for the pet and collector markets, figure on the agenda.

Indonesia has proposed tighter controls for trade in ramin, one of Southeast Asia's highest earning export timbers but hit hard by heavy and often illegal logging.

The CITES register has three sections. The first, most rigorous category has 600 animal and 300 plant species for which all commercial trade is banned except under special circumstances.

The second category, with more than 4,100 animals and 28,000 plant species, allows some international trade but only under permit. A third covers species that individual countries protect within their own national borders.

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